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The writer of this letter, be it said in passing, was the man whom Mr. Weems and others tell us was knocked down before his soldiers, and then apologized to his assailant. It may be suspected that it was well for the recipient of this letter that he did not have a personal interview with its author, and it may be doubted if he ever sought one subsequently.
The deep, full tones came swelling upon the night wind, and fell with a startling distinctness upon the ear. "It's my hound, Mister Hare," said a low, coarse voice at the doorway, and Seth Rawbon entered the cabin and closed the door behind him. "It's my hound. Miss Weems, and I guess he's on the track of that nigger, Jim."
In much of this false estimate Irving was doubtless misled by the fables of Weems. But while he has given us a dignified portrait of Washington, it is as far as possible removed from that of the smileless prig which has begun to weary even the popular fancy.
There seems to have been but one opinion among the Americans as to the mistake of D'Estaign, in granting the required indulgence. Weems, speaking for General Horry, says, "I never beheld Marion in so great a passion. I was actually afraid he would have broken out on General Lincoln. 'My God! he exclaimed, 'who ever heard of anything like this before?
There has been in reality a good deal of needless confusion about Weems and his book, for he was not a complex character, and neither he nor his writings are difficult to value or understand. By profession a clergyman or preacher, by nature an adventurer, Weems loved notoriety, money, and a wandering life.
One couldn't nobble the man, and still I didn't intend that he should read that Recipe. So, being unable to make up my mind to any other course of proceeding, I just cowered quietly where I was and awaited developments. As it turned out, these were not very long in coming. Weems had lifted up his voice to get rid of his guide, and the guide, in eloquent Minorquin, was refusing to understand.
"Then I remain with them," she replied, with dignity and firmness. The man who had first remonstrated with Rawbon, stepped up to him and laid his hand heavily on his shoulder: "Look here, Seth Rawbon, you've played out your hand in this game, now mind that. Miss Weems, you're free to go, anyhow, with them chaps or not, just as you like."
Stephen's parish." Such particularity might be presumed to settle the question. The infancy of Marion was unpromising. At birth he was puny and diminutive in a remarkable degree. Weems, in his peculiar fashion, writes, "I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily enough have been put into a quart pot."
Pretyman wrote a life of Pitt, and according to Macaulay it enjoys the distinction of being the worst biography ever written. Lord Rosebery, however, declares the book is not so bad as it might be. I believe there are two other biographies equally stupid: Weems' "Life of Washington," and the book on Gainsborough, by Thicknesse.
They were emphatically books. Day after day he read, pondered and inwardly digested them until they were his own. Better books he could not have found in all the universities of Europe, and we begin to understand where he got his moral vision, his precision of English style, and his shrewd humor. Later he borrowed from a neighbor, Josiah Crawford, a copy of Weems' Life of Washington.
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